Mushrooms have been used frequently since olden days as food materials having unique flavors and odors. They have also been used as Chinese herbal medicines as having physiological function activating actions, such as enhancement of immunocompetence, antimicrobial activity, control of biorhythm, and prevention of senescence, or as folk medicines for certain types of diseases. Studies of pharmacological ingredients concerned with mushrooms are in progress, resulting in the discovery of ingredients showing antibacterial and antiviral actions, a cardiotonic action, a hypoglycemic action, a cholesterol lowering action, an antithrombotic action, and an antihypertensive action.
Proposals have been made for compositions which are usable as medicines, health foods, etc. and which comprise a mixture of dry products or extracts of two or more mushrooms selected from edible mushrooms among basidiomycetes, especially, Lentinus edodes (Berk.) Sing., Pleurotus ostreatus (Jacq. ex Fr.) Quel., Pholiota nameko (T. Ito) S. Ito et Imai, Grifola frondosa, Flammulina velutipes (Curt. ex Fr.) Sing., and Hypsizigus marmoreus (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1999-152230).
In recent years, Agaricus Blazei murill (hereinafter referred to as agaricus mushroom), Phellinus linteus (Berk. et Curt) Tehg (hereinafter referred to as mesimacobu) and so on have attracted attention as having an anticancer action.
For examples, proposals have been put forward for a method for high-yield cultivation of mushrooms of the genus Phellinus such as mesimacobu (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1999-262329), a method for culturing mesimacobu mycelia for obtaining large amounts of mycelia of mesimacobu (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-178448) and a method for efficiently extracting ingredients contained in agaricus mushroom by use of ultrasonic waves (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-278805).
As described above, various mushrooms have drawn attention as having an anticancer action, etc. However, they are not decisively effective, and the advent of mushrooms having a better effect is desired.